ALBANY -- Calling the state's treatment of its capital city irrational and unfair, a report released Thursday blames Albany taxpayers' ever-escalating burden on New York state's refusal to pay its fare share.

The analysis, titled "Capital Punishment," was commissioned by Mayor Jerry Jennings and prepared under the direction of former state Budget Director John Cape, whose voice city officials hope will lend credibility to their cries that Albany taxpayers have been consistently shortchanged.

Released less than a week after Jennings unveiled a painful proposed 2011 budget with deep cuts to close a $23 million gap, the analysis largely lauds Jennings' fiscal stewardship of the city in spite of what it describes as the state's unwillingness to properly consider Albany's unique position as home base for state government.

"These budgetary forces are not reflective of poor planning on the city's part but rather irrational and inequitable policies and compensation from other entities -- namely New York state," the report declares.

Among other things, the 31-page document calls for the state to pay Albany $11 million a year for the roughly 350 acres of tax-exempt land on the W. Averell Harriman State Office Building Campus on top an annual $5 million "Capital City Grant" similar to those doled out in Trenton, N.J., Annapolis, Md., Lansing, Mich., Harrisburg, Pa., and Madison, Wis.

The issue of a payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, on the Harriman campus is an especially sore spot between Jennings and Gov. David Paterson, who vetoed a $300 million pact in 2008 amid the state's own burgeoning fiscal crisis.

The report also calls for a dramatic boost in the per-capita state aid that Albany receives, citing the large gap between what Albany and other comparable upstate cities receive.

Albany, the report notes, receives $139 per resident in state aid, compared to $189 for Schenectady, $286 for Utica, $437 for Rochester, $533 for Syracuse, $550 for Yonkers and $611 for Buffalo.

If Albany received merely the average of those rates, it would receive an additional $33.8 million in state aid annually.

That disparity forces the city to rely on property taxes for 29 percent of its budget, compared to 25 percent for Utica, 18 percent for Buffalo, 15 percent for Yonkers, 13 percent for Rochester and 8 percent for Syracuse.

Combined with the fact that 60 percent of the city's tax base -- much of that state land -- is tax exempt, the report concludes, just 40 percent of Albany's property owners shoulder 100 percent of the tax burden -- a burden city officials contend is already made too high by the inequity in per-capita aid.

While Erik Kriss, a spokesman for the state Division of Budget, acknowledged that historically the state's aid payments -- which date in some form to 1946 -- have not been based on hard formula, he said the state has made strides since to 2005 to make them more equitable by basing them on criteria tied to the state's estimation of a city's fiscal distress.

Those criteria include the value of taxable property, population loss, poverty rate and how much a city is already taxing its residents and businesses.

But Albany officials argue that even now the baseline for what cities receive under the new system is still what they received during those many years of inequity, essentially rewarding cities that were poorly managed.

Those aid figures, however, don't include the $22.85 million the state has been paying the city in lieu of taxes on Empire State Plaza.

Those payments -- which Kriss noted are not made to any other city where the state owns property -- are scheduled to drop to $15 million annually next year until they expire in 2033.

That landmark PILOT agreement, forged between Jennings and Gov. George Pataki, has been modified five times since its inception in 2000, increasing its total value from $269 million to more than a half-billion dollars, Kriss said.

He said that when you include the PILOT money in the equation, the city actually receives $380 per capita.

But city officials have forcefully rejected the idea that the PILOT money should count, arguing instead that the PILOT payments are a separate entity that merely make the city whole for tax revenue lost by hosting state government.

The report also recommends the state heed Albany's request to keep the payments for the Empire State Plaza at $22.8 million for at least another four years, effectively giving the city a $31 million advance on money it's already owed on the back end of the deal.

Jennings proposed such an advance -- known as a spin-up -- in January, but it stalled in the state Legislature.

Pataki was the last governor with whom Jennings had a close working relationship, and many around the city have pinned their hopes on the possible ascension of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to the governor's mansion.

Cuomo and Jennings are well-known to have a close relationship, but earlier this week Jennings told the Times Union he has not yet broached the issues with his party's gubernatorial nominee.